Comfort women; Yuki Tanaka on sexual violence of military(1)

"At 17;00 I was called to General MacArthur's quarters for a conference concerning some reported rapes cases on the part of Marines, There are also reports of some "acting up" on the part of 11th Airborne troop..."

It is interesting to note that the subject of the very first meeting between the top two military men of the US occupation forces immediately after the surrender ceremony was neither "the democratization of Japan " nor "the future status of Emperor Hirohito" but "rape by Marines"
Page123 Japan's Comfort Women/Yuki Tanaka

Mike Honda of the US representative and Onish of NYT are really righteous men, they want to make Japan to issue further apologies, because the several apologies by Japanese government are not "sincere" enough. He referred to the Congressional research, and the research referred to the book "Japan's comfort women" by Yuki Tanaka. But I think it was ironical the US congressional research cited Tanaka's book.
As far as I read the book, there is nothing new about the part describing Japanese system of comfort station. Sure it emphasizes the coercive aspects of the system,
and the brutal cases of rape, citing testimonies of the former comfort women, and accuse Japan vehemently . (though,for some reason, it does not mention the fact Japanese police regulated illegal brokers.)
However, note the author wrote

From the available testimonies of former comfort women, it is strongly believed that kidnapping and abduction were not widely used methods of procurement. page 44

It is apparent that many young Korean turned to prostitution to provide the essential income for their poverty-stricken families to survive. A series of the articles entitled "Poverty makes prostitutes", that appeared in September 1927 in the Korean newspaper Dongah Ilbo, clearly indicates this situation. It seems many young women were sold to brothels in returned for an advance payment to their families. Many married women also became prostitutes due to financial difficulties that arose while their husband were working away from home page 35

What is new is rather the part accusing the sexual violence's on the part of the US.
Let me cite the part Honda and the research ignored.

5 Sexual violence committed by the Allied occupation forces against Japanese women 1945-1946
Page 111

Soon after the US marine landed, all the women of a village on Motobu Peninsula fell into the hands of these American soldiers. At the time , there were only women, children and old people in the village, as ll the young men had been mobilized for the war, ....Taking advantage of this situation , they started "hunting for women" in broad daylight....It was no different from the "brutal acts on conquerors," committed by the Japanese forces in China.

page 112

US troops landed on Zamami Island , ...and began raping women there in March 1945, shortly after they had landed. They abducted the women, carried them one by one to deserted coastal areas and gang-raped them.......There is also a testimonies that some Okinawan nurses and local women patients who had been admitted to the US Field Hospital were raped by US soldiers. One of the victims, a young girl patient was raped by a GI in front of her father....The rape of Okinawan women by American soldiers continued even after the war officially ended and there are many incidents in which American soldiers took young girls from civilians houses at gunpoint.

"The rape of Okinawa'?

There is a lot more, I'll come back to it later.

Yuki Tanaka (2)
Yuki Tanaka (3)

................................................................................

page 54
The managers f comfort stations were instructed by the military authorities about the "salary" arrangements for their employees." For example,....half of the fee had to be paid to the comfort women and the other half to the manager. Expenses fro meals and bedding for the comfort women were supposed to be the manager's responsibility, while those for closing, hairdressing and cosmetics had to be met by each comfort woman. In case of illness, it was stipulated that 70 percent of medial expenses be paid by the manager. ....in the case of a women for whom more than 1.500 yen had been paid in advance at the time of her recruitment, she would receive at least 40 percent of her taking....

page 55
Obviously the managers took advantage of the lack of education and the naivety of their "employees," and gave them as little information as possible regarding their due payments and expenses that the manager were expected to meet.
Available testimonies from Korean comfort women verify this point. For example, in her testimony, Yi Tungnam, a former comfort woman from Korea, described the "financial arrangement" she had with her manager, Kaneyama, whose Korean name was Kim, while working at a comfort station in Hankou:

Kaneyama said that he would keep 70 percent of our income and we would get 30 percent. He claimed to be keeping a record so that he could give us our money in one lump sum when we left the station. Sometimes, if we asked for money to buy clothes that we needed , he would give us about 20 yen each and say he had deducted it from our respective record. However, he barely gave enough money for new clothes , offering us a little perhaps once every few months. The money I had was given to me by soldiers one in a while. And even if i wanted to buy something, it was never easy to go our. Kaneyaa disapproved of us leaving the station to buy anything for the merchants up the road. He argued that we might miss the customers.

Most former comfort women testify that they received little payment from their managers and the money they did get was mainly pocket money form occasional tips from their "clients". One Korean former comfort women, Mun Okocha claims that she managed to save money given to her as tips by officer....However it seems that her case was exceptional...

infimum Says:
May 9th, 2007 at

Basically, the image of American GIs in Japan is giving out Hershey’s chocolates to children, at least that is what I thought.

Japan Center of Asian Historical Records have relevant reports on such rapes. You can search the archive with the key word “進駐軍ノ不法行為” in their homepage.
http://www.jacar.go.jp/index.html

Also, the grand-daughter of the founder of Mitsubishi built an orphanage called Elizabeth Sanders Home for mixed children. They eventually built a school called St. Stephen’s School for them. The school still exists today.
http://www.stephen-oiso.ed.jp/index.html
Topcat Says:
May 9th, 2007 at

Bender,

You are right, I should have given something credible.

I have to make a correction first:
2,536 murders (not 9,000 sorry!)
29,768 rapes
for 7 years from 1945 to 1952
(both numbers are officially reported and recorded ones as crimes, actual numbers are estimated much larger)

I should have written –

Japanese lawmakers and many Japanese journalists/ historians/ non-fiction writers say that about 2,500 murders and about 30,000 rapes were done by US soldiers during the occupation period.

衆議院議事録
http://www.shugiin.go.jp/itdb_kaigiroku.nsf/html/kaigiroku/000216620070221002.htm
”実は、その調査をしていて、早急に、ペロシ米下院議長、マイク・ホンダ議員に翻訳して差し上げてもらいたいような資料が出てきました。

　資料二を見ていただきたいと思うんですけれども、これは官報号外、昭和二十八年二月二十七日に載った第十五回国会の社会党の藤原道子議員の質問の議事録です。

　二ページ目の上段に線が引いてありますけれども、そこにはこのように書かれてあります。「米軍の暴行事件は、昨年十二月まで独立後」独立後ですよ、「八カ月間におきまして千八百七十八件を数え、なお泣き寝入りになつておりまする件数は厖大な数であろうと想像されております。」

　次に、三段目の線のところを見ていただきたいと思いますけれども、またこうも述べておられます。

　私は、米軍の日本進駐に対し、この尊い母に代つて青年の純潔と健康と堕落から青年を守つた米軍をこそ、信頼し、期待していたのであります。併しこの期待はみごとに裏切られました。基地附近の百鬼夜行の有様は、学童の勉学する所まで荒らされ、幼児さえ米兵の行為の真似をして遊ぶ状態は、ひとり日本の母を悲しませるのみならず、遠く我が子の上を思うアメリカの妻が、母たちが、若しこの実情を知りましたならば、その歎きと、当局に対する不信と憤りは、どのような結果を招くでありましようか。それとも、アメリカの婦人尊重、正義人道とは、アメリカ国内だけであつて、ヨーロッパではそれは紳士道を守るが、アジアの国々においては、その国内法を無視し、何をしてもよい、軍紀も何も通用しないことになつているのでございましようか。

　アメリカの若き兵士の妻、母の立場をもおもんぱかった格調高い日本女性議員の訴えは、読んでいて心を打つものがあると思うんですね。私は、戦後失われたものの一つに、正当な抗議をしなくてはならないときにしてこなかったことがあると思うんです。”

産経新聞阿比留記者のブログ
http://abirur.iza.ne.jp/blog/entry/130519
”(2)アメリカ
　アメリカ軍が日本に進駐したとき、最初の1か月、それも神奈川県下だけで2900件の強姦事件が発生した。7年の占領期間中には2536件の殺人と3万件の強姦事件を起こした。事態を憂慮したGHQは、ついに東京都に慰安所の設置を要求した。これはうわさや誇張ではなくれっきとした事実である。”

ＳＡＰＩＯ　2007年４月11日号　
封印されていた占領下の米兵「日本人婦女子凌辱事件」ファイル／水間政憲
http://skygarden.shogakukan.co.jp/skygarden/owa/solrenew_magcode?
sha=1&neoc=2300204107&keitai=0
ジャーナリストの水間政憲氏が国立公文書館から探し出したというファイル。ファイルは377ページに及ぶ「進駐軍ノ不法行為」(内務省警保局外事課)という手書きの原本。没収され米国に持ち去られていたものを、1973年に日本に返還された資料。
＊国立公文書館
http://www.archives.go.jp/

52-53/Top cat/anpontan/eyes wide shut
米兵による戦後沖縄の女性に対する犯罪cash